Global PACT Thailand: Warm Heart Foundation
Global PACT's community partner in Thailand is the Warm Heart Foundation
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General Information |
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| Program: |
Volunteer Placement |
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| Location: | Phrao, Thailand |
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| Language: | Thai with English translation | |
| Dates: | Open, two month minimum |
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| Housing: | Shared residences | |
| Partner: | Warm Heart Foundation |
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| Program Fee: | $600 first month, $500 per month thereafter |
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| Admissions: | Online | |
| Deadline: | Rolling: Contact us for availability (732) 579-8500 | |
| Notes: | Included: housing, airport pick-up, motorbike rental, visa preparation paperwork. Not included: cost of visa and work permit (if required), personal basic
medical insurance and personal expenses while in country. |
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Phrao, Thailand
Warm Heart offers solutions to the grinding poverty of Phrao District, Chiang Mai Province in Thailand, and to its most terrible consequence, the trafficking of many of its young children into the commercial sex industry.
Warm Heart Children’s Homes
Warm Heart provides two family-style homes for an increasing number of children and house parents. The Children’s Homes saw its first five children enter in May 2009. In May 2010 an additional seven children will join the first five. The Children's Homes are also the designate housing of final resort for the Phrao community's HIV+ children when they lose their caregivers.
The Farm
The Children's Homes are surrounded by fields, orchards and fish ponds that provide much of the food the children eat. The community minimizes operating costs by feeding itself and serves as a demonstration site for the Warm Heart business incubator.
The Warm Heart Schools
In addition to creating a stable family environment, the Children's Homes have become the local gathering place for children from surrounding villages. At first they came to take advantage of the homework help that Warm Heart staff provided the Warm Heart kids, but when there were too many of them, Warm Heart started a formal after school program. Within months the program had more than fifty students studying English and receiving homework help.
The success of the after school program led to a Saturday school offering English, math and sports. When Saturday school grew too large, Warm Heart forged a partnership with the Chiang Mai University Volunteer Program, which now provides not only half a dozen teachers, but volunteers assisting at the office, with microenterprise, in local government and more.
Warm Heart Village-Based Entrepreneurship Incubator
Saving and educating children are investments in the future; without immediate improvements in the local economy, they will never pay off. Phrao residents must have jobs that earn a living wage, because, if not, people will continue to leave for the cities where even prostitution is better than nothing at all.
Warm Heart therefore offers a business incubator to help people help themselves. The incubator provides basic business education from personal finance to micro-enterprise training, product development, manufacturing, packaging, quality control and marketing consulting. Warm Heart staff are always available and follow up constantly. Most importantly, Warm Heart is the only micro-enterprise/micro-finance/economic development operation in the entire district.
Today the Warm Heart Training Center trains women to grow organic silk and cotton, to spin and dye thread and to weave. Warm Heart team members have developed new, more productive silk tables and a new, less expensive loom design. Today Warm Heart trainings are over-subscribed and Warm Heart producer cooperatives have received dividends from their American sales as large as $1,000!
